Children in failing Buffalo schools have the right to transfer to a school in good standing, regardless of whether the district has the space to accommodate them, the state Department of Education has ruled.
The ruling is likely to cause serious headaches for a district in which 45 out of 57 schools are considered to be low-performing by the state.
In a letter to Superintendent Pamela Brown last week, the Education Department’s Office of Accountability said the district “is not in compliance” with federal and state requirements that allow any parent with a child in a “priority” or “focus” school to seek transfer to a better one.
In theory, that means that the parents of more than 27,000 children – out of an overall district enrollment of 34,700 students – are entitled to have their children transferred to school that is not on the state’s watch list.
In reality, less than 3 percent of eligible parents typically request student transfers, according to district information for the past six years. For this school year, only 502 parents requested school transfers. Of that number, 165 transfers were actually made.
The District Parent Coordinating Council filed a complaint with the state in November over the failure of the school district to accommodate all transfer requests. The state response was to that initial complaint, said President Samuel Radford III.
“The federal regulations are designed to protect the child, so that a child in a failing school cannot be condemned to attend a failing school against their will,” he said.
He added that the district has been out of compliance with the rules for years and didn’t make all the necessary changes even when the violations were pointed out to them clearly in 2011.
District leaders did make strides this school year to accommodate transfer requests and was relatively successful in making transfer options available to many children in elementary grades.
Many transfers ultimately did not occur because of the special needs requirements of the students, because parents withdrew their children from the district, or because the parents declined an available seat at a different school.
But in 95 of the applications – 85 of which were at the high-school level – parents were denied the right to transfer their children because there simply wasn’t an open seat available at any of the district’s schools in good standing.
State and federal regulations, however, do “not include lack of capacity as an acceptable reason to deny students the option to transfer,” wrote state Assistant Commissioner Ira Schwartz.
The State Education Department appears to have reversed its position from a year ago when a spokesman for the department stated that districts are not required to create additional seats at schools in good standing to accommodate all requests.
Among the district’s 16 high schools, only five are considered schools in good standing by the state, and all of them are city high schools with specific admission standards. That raises the bar considerably for parents looking to transfer their child to any of the available high schools – City Honors, Olmsted 156, Leonardo da Vinci, Hutch Tech and Emerson.
Federal guidance documents regarding No Child Left Behind state if a school district does not have enough existing capacity at its good schools, it must expand those schools somehow or consider other alternatives, such as opening new charter schools or working with private schools or neighboring school districts to provide students with seats outside the district.
“Why are we rewarding failure?” Radford said. “You can’t justify putting families and children first and not move those dollars to where they serve children and families the best. As parents, we’re not going to accept that.”
He also produced a letter from the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo stating that Catholic schools within a one- mile radius of Buffalo have the ability to accommodate roughly 300 high school students. Another 450 elementary students could be accommodated at Catholic schools within the city limits.
The Buffalo Public Schools has until June 30 to submit a corrective plan to the state Education Department detailing how it will address these issues.
As part of the corrective plan, the district must also find ways to honor the transfer requests of parents who have students with disabilities and those with limited English proficiency. Until now, those transfer requests have been denied.
In response to the state findings, Superintendent Pamela Brown offered a brief statement.
“We are reviewing the information provided by the state in determining how to best address the state’s expectations for the development of a corrective action plan for the 2013-14 school year,” she said. “That is as much as I can share at this point in time.”
email: stan@buffnews.com
The ruling is likely to cause serious headaches for a district in which 45 out of 57 schools are considered to be low-performing by the state.
In a letter to Superintendent Pamela Brown last week, the Education Department’s Office of Accountability said the district “is not in compliance” with federal and state requirements that allow any parent with a child in a “priority” or “focus” school to seek transfer to a better one.
In theory, that means that the parents of more than 27,000 children – out of an overall district enrollment of 34,700 students – are entitled to have their children transferred to school that is not on the state’s watch list.
In reality, less than 3 percent of eligible parents typically request student transfers, according to district information for the past six years. For this school year, only 502 parents requested school transfers. Of that number, 165 transfers were actually made.
The District Parent Coordinating Council filed a complaint with the state in November over the failure of the school district to accommodate all transfer requests. The state response was to that initial complaint, said President Samuel Radford III.
“The federal regulations are designed to protect the child, so that a child in a failing school cannot be condemned to attend a failing school against their will,” he said.
He added that the district has been out of compliance with the rules for years and didn’t make all the necessary changes even when the violations were pointed out to them clearly in 2011.
District leaders did make strides this school year to accommodate transfer requests and was relatively successful in making transfer options available to many children in elementary grades.
Many transfers ultimately did not occur because of the special needs requirements of the students, because parents withdrew their children from the district, or because the parents declined an available seat at a different school.
But in 95 of the applications – 85 of which were at the high-school level – parents were denied the right to transfer their children because there simply wasn’t an open seat available at any of the district’s schools in good standing.
State and federal regulations, however, do “not include lack of capacity as an acceptable reason to deny students the option to transfer,” wrote state Assistant Commissioner Ira Schwartz.
The State Education Department appears to have reversed its position from a year ago when a spokesman for the department stated that districts are not required to create additional seats at schools in good standing to accommodate all requests.
Among the district’s 16 high schools, only five are considered schools in good standing by the state, and all of them are city high schools with specific admission standards. That raises the bar considerably for parents looking to transfer their child to any of the available high schools – City Honors, Olmsted 156, Leonardo da Vinci, Hutch Tech and Emerson.
Federal guidance documents regarding No Child Left Behind state if a school district does not have enough existing capacity at its good schools, it must expand those schools somehow or consider other alternatives, such as opening new charter schools or working with private schools or neighboring school districts to provide students with seats outside the district.
“Why are we rewarding failure?” Radford said. “You can’t justify putting families and children first and not move those dollars to where they serve children and families the best. As parents, we’re not going to accept that.”
He also produced a letter from the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo stating that Catholic schools within a one- mile radius of Buffalo have the ability to accommodate roughly 300 high school students. Another 450 elementary students could be accommodated at Catholic schools within the city limits.
The Buffalo Public Schools has until June 30 to submit a corrective plan to the state Education Department detailing how it will address these issues.
As part of the corrective plan, the district must also find ways to honor the transfer requests of parents who have students with disabilities and those with limited English proficiency. Until now, those transfer requests have been denied.
In response to the state findings, Superintendent Pamela Brown offered a brief statement.
“We are reviewing the information provided by the state in determining how to best address the state’s expectations for the development of a corrective action plan for the 2013-14 school year,” she said. “That is as much as I can share at this point in time.”
email: stan@buffnews.com